138. How VAs and OBMs Can Make Their Offer an Easy Yes

Wondering why people are not buying your offer? If you are a VA, OBM, or done-for-you service provider whose offer feels like a hard sell, the fix is probably not more marketing or more deliverables. It is that your offer makes people do too much work to figure out if it is for them. So why do buyers say yes to some offers instantly and hesitate on others? What is the one shift that turns a task list into an easy yes? And how do you know if your offer sounds exactly like everyone else's? I share the patterns I heard from a room full of service providers, and the simple change that moves more sales than any marketing tweak.

In this episode:

✨ What actually makes people hesitate to buy your offer

✨ Why selling tasks makes your offer a harder yes

✨ How to describe the transformation instead of a task list

✨ The name test that shows if your offer sounds generic

✨ Why this is not a marketing problem

✉️ Join my email list to be first, and get a founder's rate, on a new offer I am building.

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Podcast produced and edited with love by @FerAssists

Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Hello, and welcome to Soulpreneur Scaling Stories. I'm Andrea, a certified OBM turned business coach helping VAs, OBMs, and done-for-you service pros turn their unstructured expertise into a signature method and a business that pays them for outcomes, not hours. So if you want a business that gives you freedom instead of taking it, you're in the right place.

[00:00:23] Andrea Elibero: So I invite you to think back to a time where you invested money in your business. You purchased something, maybe it was a course or coaching or some sort of tool or whatever, and it was an easy yes. It was a thing that you were like, "Okay, I'm excited about this, and I'm happy to spend the money." So think about that for a second, and if you haven't

[00:00:46] Andrea Elibero: No, you know, if that hasn't happened to you, stay with me because I host these monthly ... Um, they're called Flow Lab Networking Calls. Join, come. They're in the link down below. Um, and we have a hot topic discussion to start off the call, and then we do some [00:01:00] networking. And I asked this question to this room, so it was a group of VAs, OBMs, done-for-you service providers, and it was so interesting because the answers had something in common, and I'm gonna share them with you now.

[00:01:16] Andrea Elibero: So here's what happened. So basically, again, I asked people this question. When ... Think of a time where they invested in something and it felt easy, like it was an easy yes. And what did they say? "Well, I trusted this. It solved a problem that I was actively dealing with in that moment. The timing was right.

[00:01:30] Andrea Elibero: Someone I respected recommended it. The value was really clear to me." And so those are reasons, right, that people purchase things, right? It makes sense. Nobody said something like, "Oh, well, the sales page listed out every single deliverable in painstaking detail." Nobody said something like, "Oh, well, they really thoroughly explained, you know, their entire step-by-step process."

[00:01:51] Andrea Elibero: And now I asked them, and I'm going to ask you the same thing, right? So you're thinking about something you purchased, okay. It was an easy yes, and why? Maybe it was one of those reasons [00:02:00] that I just listed. 

[00:02:01] Andrea Elibero: So now I invite you to think about your own offers, right? And think about are people feeling that same way about you, and if not, why? If you think about why did somebody not buy from you, are you making up reasons why they didn't do that?

[00:02:21] Andrea Elibero: Are they telling you? A lot of times, yes, it has to do with budget, but there's reasons for that that I will get into. Um, oftentimes I hear the same reasons. So I do these free business audits, also linked in the show notes, um, and a lot of people will tell me, "Well, I just need to market more. I need to market better.

[00:02:37] Andrea Elibero: I need to add more to my offer. I need to give more value," or maybe people are just not interested in what I'm selling. But here is the thing. That's not the reason. 99% of the time, that's not the reason why people are not buying your offers. It's something a step before that, and it has nothing to do with any of what I just said, right?

[00:02:57] Andrea Elibero: It's not that the offer doesn't have enough in it. It's not that it's not valuable. [00:03:00] It's that when they see your offer, they have to do too much work to figure out if it's for them, and let me tell you what I mean. So if you picture two offers, right? If you picture an OBM, and offer one says, "I provide OBM support.

[00:03:17] Andrea Elibero: I help with launches, systems, project management, team communications, SOPs, inbox management, and operations." Offer two says, "I help online business owners go from feeling like they're holding their entire business together in their head to running a business that operates smoothly even when they're not managing every detail."

[00:03:34] Andrea Elibero: If you had to buy one of those right now, which one is an easier yes for you When I asked this question in the networking, everybody picked the second one, right? Obviously. And I said, "Why?" And it's because they understood the pro- they understood the transformation. It's not because they said, "Oh, this was the list of services that they do."

[00:03:56] Andrea Elibero: It's that, okay, they understand this is what the [00:04:00] struggle is, and this is what's going to happen because of this offer. And it was interesting, right? Because the two offers are the same thing. One doesn't include more than the other. Offer two does not do anything that offer one doesn't do. But here, it has more meaning.

[00:04:14] Andrea Elibero: It paints a picture, right? It talks about where somebody is right now and where they're going to be after working with you. And it's not asking somebody to do all the work to put it together. It's not a task list. It's a before and after. And the single biggest mistake that done-for-you service letters make in their offers is that they're selling tasks, right?

[00:04:37] Andrea Elibero: You're not selling tasks. You're selling a transformation, and that transformation needs to be spelled out for the client. Think about it. Think about back to the offer that you purchased for yourself. I bet you they did just that. You understood that they were talking to you. You understood that they're painting the picture of where you are now and what's going to happen after you purchase this [00:05:00] thing, and it made complete sense to you.

[00:05:01] Andrea Elibero: You didn't have to do any work and figure out, "Okay, is this what I need?" You know? It has to... It mattered to you 'cause you were the right person for that offer, and that's all that you have to do. That is how you make your offer an easy yes. So the question, now ask yourself, is not what do I do? It's what changes for my clients because of what I do.

[00:05:21] Andrea Elibero: What becomes easier for them? What becomes possible for them? What do they finally stop worrying about at 11 o'clock at night because of what I do for them? And so if you want to kind of do, like, a gut check for this, if you took your name off of your offer, right? If it was just there and somebody was reading what it consisted of, would your ideal client still know without a doubt that this was written specifically for them?

[00:05:43] Andrea Elibero: Or could it belong to 10 other people that do the exact same thing that you do? Like that offer one that I said earlier. So if it sounds like everybody else, we need to rework this. And the thing that is really cool about why [00:06:00] this works is because even though on the surface it looks like a marketing problem, it's not, it's not that, right?

[00:06:05] Andrea Elibero: When you are not talking about your offer in the right way, in a way that is resonating with your ideal clients, you're asking them to do the translation. You're asking them to do their own math, and clients don't wanna do their own math, right? They don't have time for that. Nobody has time for that. I don't wanna do my own math , you know?

[00:06:24] Andrea Elibero: They don't wanna have to look at your offer, translate it to their situation, and decide for themselves if it solves their problem. That's a lot of work, and people are busy and tired and they don't wanna do that, you know? And so if... Obviously, if you are you, you understand how it helps them, but they don't.

[00:06:41] Andrea Elibero: They don't understand that. So a-- When you are able to describe the transformation, it skips all of that, right? They understand. And there's, "Okay, this is what I do. This is how I help. This is what... You don't have to worry about that anymore." And that makes it-- your offer an easy yes. You don't have to change [00:07:00] anything about what you do.

[00:07:01] 

[00:07:02] Andrea Elibero: So if you have ever felt like you do good work and you know that when your clients work with you, you know, they are happy, but It can be a little bit difficult when you're on a call or when you're talking about your offers, because it's kind of all over the place. And it's... There's no, like, thread that holds everything together, you know?

[00:07:28] Andrea Elibero: So before you touch your marketing, before you add anything else to your actual deliverable, ask yourself if your offer is describing what you do or if it's describing what changes because of that. And that is going to move more sales than any of these other things, like, that I talked about earlier, like your marketing, like changing your offer, etcetera, etcetera.

[00:07:52] Andrea Elibero: And the thing that is really cool for me is that I have been sitting with this, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and because of [00:08:00] that, I had this inspiration, like literally today, as I recorded this this morning, that I was like, "Okay, I am like offer ecosystem girl. I've been really focusing on my main offer.

[00:08:10] Andrea Elibero: I talk about expansion all the time. My one-on-one is now six months. I got a facelift. Go look it up. Um, but I want to add to my ecosystem, you know, and bring my clients on more of a journey," which is what I teach my clients to do. So I have... I'm creating, I came up with this idea today, something new that is going to really help with this.

[00:08:30] Andrea Elibero: And if you... It's for done-for-you service providers who have an offer and want to make it an easier yes, and it's not just about the messaging. So I'm not going to talk about the details, but it is... Oh, I just said I came up with the idea today, so it'll be a minute, you know, in the next few weeks. But if you want to be the first to know when it is ready, my email list is going to get that.

[00:08:51] Andrea Elibero: They're not only gonna be the first to know, they're gonna be the only ones who get a little bonus and maybe a little founder's rate. We'll [00:09:00] see. So if you're not on the list, join it, because that's where all the magic is going to happen, and I'm really excited about this. This is gonna be a smaller o- offer than, uh, my big kahuna expansion.

[00:09:14] Andrea Elibero: So if you're wanting that, this will be for you. Anyways, um, go join my email list. And so in the meantime, look at your offer. Decide, "Is this an easy yes? Am I describing it in a way where there's a transformation there, where I'm not just talking about what I do? Or am I making my clients do too much work?"

[00:09:38] Andrea Elibero: And let me know. Reach out to me on Instagram or on Threads @soulfulbizcoachandrea, and share with me what you've come up with, 'cause I'm really interested in that. But that is it. Go look at your offer. Ask yourself the questions that I asked you. Is it an easy yes, or are you making people work to figure out what you do for them or what the benefits are for you?

[00:09:56] Andrea Elibero: That is all that I have for you today, so I will see you guys in the next episode. 

[00:09:59] Andrea Elibero: [00:10:00] That's a wrap on today's episode, and thank you so much for listening. If anything we talked about today made you think, "Okay, well what does this actually look like in my business?" That's exactly what a free business audit is for. In just 45 minutes, I'll help you identify your unstructured expertise, pinpoint what's keeping you capped, and map out what your signature method could look like.

[00:10:22] Andrea Elibero: There's a link in the show notes to grab your spot, and I will see you in the next episode.